Web of destinies is a novel about a French doctor who inherits a mysterious typewriter that
can change the past, and is confronted with a secret agent who wants to use it
to change history and a Buddhist monk who wants to stop him.

Wednesday, 21 March 2012

Living with two languages ​​and two cultures is like living a double life and it is a treasure for a lifetime. I was born in France and I spent half my life in Australia where I live today with my wife and three children who all enjoy being bilingual.

At twelve, I left Grenoble to go to Melbourne with my parents, sister and aunt. Going to college my sister and I were able to learn English very quickly but the hardest part was getting used to the Australian accent and expressions, it was so different from the English language that I had learned in France. Indeed, you don’t say “Good morning Sir”, but “G’day mate”. It was harder for my mother who stayed home and the adolescent prankster that I was could not resist teaching her phrases such as “My name is o’clock”.

French has always been the main language at home but some of our compatriots wanted to immerse themselves fully into the language of their new country by speaking only English at home, with the consequence that their young children lost their French rather quickly.

At the age of 25, I had the desire to live in France; I had not forgotten my mother tongue, but it took me some time to talk without being noticed. At first everyone thought I was a Canadian and, as I thought in English, I had a tendency to translate my sentences literally, which made me difficult to understand. In addition, the idioms had changed since I left thirteen years earlier so I had to update my manner of speaking.

When my oldest daughter was three, I wanted to introduce her to the English language, but without success. Every time I spoke English, she replied “blah blah blah!”. Despite this, when we came back to Australia, it was often her who had the best grades in spelling at her college. Indeed, I found that I noticed spelling mistakes more because it’s my second language – for example the use of ‘s to indicate the plural that I see every day at work or on the street.

Now, some things come to me more naturally in French: speaking words of love to my wife, praying and swearing – my colleagues sometimes hear me mumbling merde when the software that I use as my working tools misbehave.

Being bilingual gives you a lot more choice of reading and films (I still prefer to see a movie in its original version than dubbed) but there are things that you need to watch out for:

First there are false friends, they are numerous and can be treacherous. For example, to say: “I am going to plan today’s activities”, you would be tempted to say: “Je vais planer les activités de la journée”, whereas it means: “I am going to glide (above) today’s activities”.

Don’t use your first language, believing that no one around you understands. One day my wife was with my daughter who said in French: “We left so fast that I did not have time to put on a bra.” They heard a man’s voice behind them saying: “This is very interesting!”.

Pay special attention to words that are phonetically similar to words in English that are not so innocent. When we see a seal (something that does not happen every day, of course), we do not exclaim: “Regarde comme il est mignon, le phoque !” (“Look how cute this seal is”), but: “Regarde comme il est mignon, le seal”.